---
title: "The Toolkit"
url: "https://writing.colivetree.com/3/product/50/the-toolkit"
---

# The Product Playbook
A Playbook of Product Management Techniques

## Intro
A Product playbook is something I've wanted to do for a very long time.
Product management is an art, insofar as everything that requires human intervention to create something is art. But there is causality in what product people do and their outcomes, how the interactions between product managers, designers, developers and other stakeholders turn vision into usable objects or interfaces. This playbook aims to become a cooperative effort to describe the multiple ways one can turn insights and ideas into products that solve problems.

The concept of the playbook is inspired by sports. The best explanation I've seen is the one by Jon Lax in ["Great Products Don't Happen By Accident"](https://medium.com/great-products-dont-happen-by-accident/great-products-dont-happen-by-accident-f46323d8ad94)

The product playbook gives people plays they can apply to specific moments in the product development workflow. Each play should follow the same easily readable format and should be easy to pick-up and follow. Some of these plays originate from companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Intercom, Spotify, Amplitude or Basecamp and used industry-wide, others have been developed by individual practitioners, tried and tested in the field and represented here.

Some of the companies that openly share how they develop product are:
* [Atlassian](https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays)
* [Intercom on Product Management](https://www.intercom.com/books/product-management)
* [Basecamp - Getting Real](https://basecamp.com/about/books/Getting%20Real.pdf) / [Basecamp - Shape Up](https://basecamp.com/shapeup) 

There are also these fantastic lists of everything product:
* https://github.com/tron1991/open-product-management
* https://platformsandnetworks.blogspot.co.uk/p/resources-product-management.html
* https://www.sachinrekhi.com/top-resources-for-product-managers
* https://www.lennyrachitsky.com/p/my-favorite-templates-issue-37?u

## The Plays

### Vision & Strategy
* [Product brief](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/product_brief.md)
* [Positioning](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/product_positioning.md)
* [DIBBs](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/DIBBs.md)
* [Working Backwards](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/working_backwards.md)
* [One-pager](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/one_pager.md)
* [7 Powers](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/7_powers.md)

### Goal Setting
* [OKRs](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/OKR.md)
* [Metric Pairing](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/metric_pairing.md)
* [HEART & Goals, Signals, Metrics](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/heart_framework.md)
* [North Star Framework](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/north_star_framework.md)

### Product Discovery
* [Design Sprint](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/design_sprint.md)
* [User Testing Sessions](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/user_testing.md)
* [JTBD Interview](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/jtbd_interview.md)
* [Opportunity Solution Tree](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/opportunity_solution_tree.md)

### Alignment
* [Product Increment Sessions](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/product_increments.md)
* [Story Mapping](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/story_mapping.md)
* [Job Canvas](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/job_canvas.md)

### Testing
* [Experimentation](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/experimentation.md)
* [Riskiest Assumption Test - RAT](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/riskiest_assumption_test.md)
* [Confidence Check](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/confidence_check.md)
* [Design Critique](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/critique.md)
* [Dark Launch](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/dark_launch.md)

### Prioritising
* [Reach Impact Confidence and Effort - RICE](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/prioritisation_rice.md)
* [Sankey Diagram of Needs](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/sankey_diagram_needs.md)
* [Action Priority Matrix](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/action_priority_matrix.md)
* [Bugs, Technical Debt and Broken Windows](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/prioritising_bugs.md)
* [Kano Model](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/kano_model.md)

### Validated Learning
* [Spikes](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/spikes.md)
* [Melissa Perri's Product Kata](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/product_kata.md)


## Contributing to the Product Playbook
* [Play Format](https://github.com/colivetree/product-playbook/blob/master/template.md)
* [Guidelines for contributing]